The Route 12A strip in West Lebanon, choked with fast food outlets, chain stores and big box retailers, is unlikely to be mistaken for the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich.
But when it comes to regulating the size of store signs along 12A, there are — really — rules. That may seem odd given the thicket of illuminated marquees along the commercial strip. But a sign’s allowable size is determined by several factors, including location of the building, its square footage and surface area of the facade.
Now, finally, after the long-empty storefronts on 12A that were once a Radio Shack and D’Angelo Grilled Sandwiches shop seemed to be permanent casualties of the retail apocalypse, ConvenientMD wants to open one of its urgent care walk-in clinics in the 13,000-square-foot building.
ConvenientMD, which has nine locations in New Hampshire, bills itself as a step above other doc-in-a-box chains by saying its on-site staff (which sometimes but not always include a medical doctor) can handle 70% of the cases for which people visit a hospital ER — and at an average of 11% of the cost.
But they also say they need big signs — one on each of three sides of the building — to tell people where they are. As part of the building’s makeover, a “turret” would be built on the southwest corner that would provide a large facade for large sign lettering.
The rapidly expanding Plymouth, N.H.-based company has been eyeing West Lebanon for years and wants to occupy the south half of the building whose tenants include a Citizens Bank branch and an AT&T phone store. The building, once the home of Brown Furniture and still owned by the Brown family, sits between 12A on the west, Airport Road on the north and Interchange Drive on the south.
To do so, the AT&T phone store would shift to the north side of the building while Citizens Bank, which holds the primary lease, would remain in its current space.
While the prospect of the under-utilized building finally gaining an occupant is good news for the commercial strip where some storefronts have remained vacant for years, the size of ConvenientMD’s signage is raising concern among members of Lebanon’s Zoning Board of Adjustment, who grilled the company’s co-founder and CEO, Max Puyanic, last week when he and his attorney, Barry Schuster, went before the board seeking a variance for signage at the location.
ConvenientMD, citing its need as an urgent care clinic to be clearly identifiable to the public, is seeking a variance in the city’s zoning ordinance that would allow it to put up three separate ConvenientMD signs on the building that would total 514 square feet.
“Typically we want to be located right off highway exits,” Puyanic explained to the board. “We want to be visible for patients because they are virtually always sick or injured and under some level of distress. (It could be) as simple as child in the back seat with an earache and very unhappy … or it might be someone with a nail through their hand that is driving to see us, which happens a lot more than you think.”
Sounds straightforward enough — but given all the variables involved, determining the permitted size of a sign requires a supercomputer.
A memo prepared by the city’s planning staff sketched out the dilemma: Under current regulations, the property is permitted to have 96 square feet of sign area. But the total sign areas for existing tenants Citizen’s Bank and AT&T is 278 feet, which exceeds what is permitted by 182 square feet, thereby leaving no area left over for a third tenant (current tenants are grandfathered under prior regulations).
So for whatever size signs ConvenientMD would put up, a variance will be required.
Still, Zoning Board chairman William Koppenheffer at the meeting expressed incredulity over how much of a variance ConvenientMD was seeking, at one point calling it “mockery.”
Saying he didn’t disagree that a variance is required, Koppenheffer instead challenged what he called the “reasonableness” of ConvenientMD’s request, “which is 500 feet. You’re allowed for the whole building 96. There’s already 270 … It boggles my mind to think what other merchants up and down 12A will say.”
He also cited recent community anger over the 900-square-foot sign put atop the new New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlet behind Denny’s on Route 12A, noting that because it’s a state-owned enterprise which is not subject to local zoning ordinance “there’s not a darn thing the city of Lebanon can do about it” — as my colleague Jim Kenyon ably reported a couple weeks ago in his Valley News column.
Koppenheffer then mused aloud to Puyanic and Schuster, that “if you were to get a 500-square-foot sign my guess is that we see another story in the paper about it.”
(He’s right about that.)
Puyanic made the point that after ConvenientMD opened its first two urgent care clinics, they noticed that the smaller size of the signs was causing people — many who come from more than 30 minutes away and are not familiar with local streets — to drive past the location.
As a result, he said, ConvenientMD has sought variances on sign size on nearly every New Hampshire community it has moved into.
“We always need signage relief but particularly in this case,” Puyanic told the board, at one point acknowledging that “we do have 22 letters in our name, which doesn’t help.”
(ConvenientMD’s logo includes “urgent care.”)
Puyanic and Schuster emphasized that they are principally concerned that the signs be large enough so that they can clearly be seen from drivers approaching from I-89 and they could probably be OK with a smaller sign on the south end of the building seen by from drivers approaching from Plainfield.
“I think the applicant is right that they are entitled to some sort of relief because they can’t put up a sign under the current zoning ordinance,” Koppenheffer said. “So the question is how big a sign. And my own personal feeling is 511 square feet of signage is too much but neither can I sit here and say 20 square feet is sufficient.”
Puyanic and Schuster at the meeting did not prevail upon the Zoning Board to grant ConvenientMD the variance it sought, but Koppenheffer said he is not closed to the idea.
“We need more information,” Koppenheffer concluded.
He motioned to continue the review until the next board meeting in November and instructed ConvenientMD to provide the board with copies of “all the zoning approvals” for urgent care clinics it has received from other New Hampshire zoning boards as well as the documents showing the dimensions of the various signs.
Once that is done, the remedy is for ConvenientMD to come back to the board and “give us a proposal that is consonant with what you heard here tonight,” Koppenheffer prescribed.
A little more modest signage along Route 12A seems to me just what the doctor ordered.
Every little bit helps: The Springfield (Vt.) Food Co-op, which has the most awesome bulk food department this side of crunchy Brattleboro, Vt., has received a tax credit of about $92,000 from the Vermont Agency of Commerce that will help offset the cost of its planned relocation into the center of town.
Neomi Lauritsen, the Co-op’s general manager, said the organization is currently in negotiations to buy the former A&P market building at 6 Main St. from People’s United Bank. The move will mean more than double the space the Co-op has at its current location on Route 106 a couple miles outside town and also enable it to build a commercial kitchen, open a sit-down cafe and have room to offer educational classes.
“A customer survey we did five years ago had a bigger store and room to sit down as the top things people wanted,” Lauritsen said. “We’re still sort of patched together here as far as having an efficient operation, and the only place to sit is a picnic table outside.”
Lauritsen said the Co-op is about 20% of the way into a capital campaign to fund the $1.4 million project at the new location, which the Co-op is seeking to fund through a combination of selling “preferred shares” to members, contributions, grants and, if required, a bank loan to close the final financing gap.
With a bigger store, the Co-op is projecting annual sales will increase to “the $4 million range” from the current level of $3.2 million, Lauritsen said. A bigger business will also require a bigger staff, and she expects that means an additional six full-time employees and four part-time workers on top of the 27 people already employed.
And, given “cooperative” is in its name, the Co-op plans to be a “good neighbor” in downtown Springfield, which among other things means the cafe will not serve espresso so as not to cut into the business of Flying Crow Coffee, the new Main Street roaster and coffee place opened by Ben and Samantha Hills last March that has been a welcome addition to downtown.
“They’re doing a great job right across the street from our (hopefully) new location,” she said.
I have a feeling Starbucks or Dunkin’ wouldn’t do that.
Jason and Roberta Parker’s Angry Goat Pepper Co., maker of a wide assortment of hot pepper sauces, has moved its retail store from South Main Street in White River Junction to 135 Beswick Drive, just behind McDonald’s and Wicked Awesome BBQ off Sykes Mountain Avenue. Roberta Parker reports the move to a larger retail space also coincides with moving their production facility out of South Main Street to a larger facility in Bradford, Vt.
■ TPI Staffing Group, which has been located in the Rivermill Commercial Center on Mechanic Street since 2012, has relocated its two-person Lebanon office, headed by general manager Amber Farnham, to space in the Decato Law Office building on Hanover Street. Lauren Power, marketing associate at the four-location New Hampshire job placement agency, said TPI is seeking “to get more visibility” in Lebanon with the move to the busy traffic route between Exit 18 on Interstate 89 and the center of town. TPI will kick that off by hosting a free barbecue lunch on Oct. 17 for the public to celebrate the firm’s seven years in the Upper Valley.
■ It’s like Subway, they’re everywhere: A second U-Haul franchise has opened in Lebanon. Trucks, trailers, moving equipment and supplies are now available to rent at RightSpace Storage on Riverside Drive, only 3.7 miles away from the longtime U-Haul franchise on Hanover Street.
John Lippman wants to know your business news. Please contact him at jlippman@vnews.com.
